Caffeine Pants!

A Caffeine Revolution! Check them out at Legal Additive Stimulants. My last ditch effort to save a dying blog!

Come and play in the caffeine playground one last time, before I run an interstate bypass through the center of it!

Order Now!

Order Now! Offer while supplies last! Limit one per customer! The perfect gift! Buy one get one free! Will never wear out! Special reduced pricing! Can be shipped to Canada, Hawaii and Alaska! A real bargain! Additionally If you order within the next ten minutes you also get the amazing noodle nibbler, and our patented pickle picker, free of charge!

I love fun gadgets! Infomercials were easily one of my favorite programing choices. There is just something so comical about bad actors, ridiculous products and outrageous claims all mixed together that makes for a very enjoyable half hour of entertainment. I mean how many times can one person pretend to act surprised about a Magic Bullet?

“The Magic Bullet makes soup Jan!”

“NO!”

“Jan, The Magic Bullet, turns normal sugar into powdered sugar!”

“HOW Dan!? Is that amazing! Is it really magic Dan?”

“Listen to this Jan. The Magic Bullet will also clean up your kitchen for you! And that patch of weeds in your garden...”

And then the price game starts! This might be my favorite part of the whole performance! Why would anyone spend sixty dollars on an item that they’ve never seen in person? Because in the ad it started at one hundred and twenty bucks!

“Jon, How much would you be willing to pay for these amazing onion goggles?”

“They’re the best kitchen solution in decades Bill, I’d easily pay seventy-five dollars!”

“Well your not going to spend seventy-five dollars, or seventy-four dollars or even seventy-two fifty!”

“Seventy-two dollars!?”

“That’s right, but with shipping and handling it should be quite a bit more.”

“For these cheap plastic goggles? What a deal!”

When you do get infomercials items home, they’re never quite as good. I mean we had a food dehydrator but hardly ever used it. When it came down to it our jerky meat wasn’t sitting out in a glass dish, ready to just add to the dehydrator like it was on the television. Who wants to spend the time making the fruit paste required to make 'home made' fruit roll ups when they're only fifty-nine cents at the supermarket?

How about the day you realized that in order to chop onions in the astounding chopper, you had to cut them into small pieces first. Doesn't that defeat the point? Additionally, no matter what they tell me, I have no need for a knife that can cut both the metal head of a hammer and slice a tomato to near transparent proportions.

So now you've spent way too much on a plastic gadget that will fill up more cupboard space and be used less than you ever dreamed possible. Such is life. Consider not that you spent too much on a cheap product, but rather that your money is going to keep quality programing on the air!

Defeat?

I'm contemplating the demise of Legal Addictive Stimulants...

...Would anyone notice? I had a notion to maybe give one last try with it, but maybe it's not worth my time. Please take a moment or two and share your opinion if you are so inclined.

Thank you for your continued patronage.

Kludge
Editor and Chief
kludgespot.blogspot.com

Collecting Chopsticks

Every once in a while an event takes place that is so monumental that everyone sits up and takes notice. It shakes our society to the very core and spreads joy around the likes of which we have never known. For those that experience it life will never be the same. For those who miss out, they will always wonder if it really was as good as everyone else has claimed.

Such an event took place in my immediate circle. It was the summer of 2005 and only six houses down from me history was being made. My wife’s sister and her husband had a deep fryer. This was no ordinary deep fryer. This deep fryer was magic. Apparently when coupled with regular oil and a recipe from a near immortal celebrity cook, food went into it but joy came out.

Josh and Christine made corn dogs. As I type that it seems to wash away the truth of it. Apparently these corn dogs weren’t corn dogs like you and I have had, but the very same corn dogs that are served in Valhalla. Norse people love corn dogs. Anyway for some reason I decided not to try a corn dog. I’m sure that’s what happened. It couldn’t be that everyone else had a few thousand of these morsels and I didn’t even see one of them, let alone try one. I even recall someone commenting on how well they freeze. This means that there were so many extra corn dogs left over, they didn’t know what to do with them.

Now don’t mistake this for bitterness. No. I accepted the fact that I had somehow missed out on a near perfect delight by only six houses, and that freezers were bursting with happiness and I somehow never tried one. I can take that. Really. The issue is this.

In order to make said perfection from a hot dog, you need chopsticks. Josh and Christine didn’t have any, and used bamboo skewers instead. So in a effort to garner support for a second batch of blissful stick doggies I started to collect chopsticks. I started soon after I learned that the corn dogs, that everyone tried and loved, all rode off together into the sunset. In the months and now years that have followed, I have mentioned my collection to the would be chefs many times.

It has now almost become a joke. I have been collecting chopsticks since fall of 2005. I have a gigantic horde of wooden eating rods. I almost need to designate a new drawer for the beasties. They all sit there in quiet anticipation of their new assignment. Whenever I go to Chinese food, Japanese food, or just the teriyaki bowl, I always ask for extra.

“Can I have some chopsticks?’

“How many?”

“Seven.”

“Seven!”

“I’m very rough with them.”

“No.”

“Okay... how about four?”

I’m not sure why I’m still collecting them. I suppose I’m just being overly optimistic. The worst part is I’ve now built these corn dogs up past any level they could ever come close to meeting. Could they really be that good? I sometimes wonder if the corn dogs ever really existed. Like a myth that has been retold for generations. I’m sure it was built on some reality, I suppose there could have been a deep fat fryer somewhere, making enrapturing eatables, but just six houses down? I don’t know. It's hard to believe.

In the end, I hope so, because if not, I’ve got a lot of chopsticks to try and get rid of!

Cooking with Math

Cooking = Food

Food = Good Taste

Tasty Food = Happiness

By this simple proof I’ve decided that since I like to be happy I must also like to cook. I mean it’s pretty hard to deny that if A = B and B = C than A should also equal C. I’m not sure if it’s so. I don’t want to dismiss this obviously astounding mathematical proof I’ve created, but I’m having trouble with the solution.

I’ve been thinking a little bit about this as my wife has started to blog again. Patricia has had a blog for a while but wasn’t really into it. Now that she is contributing to the new recipe blog, new posts are popping up all the time. She is making cool new recipes at home where we are trying them out and then she posts it up for the world to see. As I peruse the page, I find that while I understand how to cook, and can follow a recipe, I’m not sure I like cooking.

There are people who think blogging is pointless. How can you spend countess hours typing up something that only a handful of people will ever see and even fewer will comment on? The answer is simple, because it’s fun for me. I enjoy dreaming up new things to talk about and funny ways of putting it.

Cooking is one of those things that I feel that way about. Why would I spend all that time, energy and resources on something I could just purchase? I mean, why spend two hours making chicken curry when the Indian restaurant is five minutes away? They welcome me with open arms, thick accents and giant vats brownish indistinguishable food substances. There are no tears from chopping onions, no stress from mixing spices, and best of all clean up is a styrofoam container!

The exception to this feeling is BBQing. I feel that I do truly enjoy BBQing food. I’d much rather cook on the BBQ than in the oven. Why would this be more rewarding? Again when answers are hard to find we turn to simple logic and bad math.

BBQing = Fire

Fire = Danger

Men = Stupid

If it has the possibility of death involved, it has just moved from chore to sport. I am a pyromaniac. Most men I know are. If we get to play with fire we’re there! Additionally there is no measuring. I don’t need half a teaspoon of this or a one cup and three quarters of that. I just smatter on as much as I want and then stoke the fire up to near heatstroke levels. Is that cooking? I think so, I mean it comes out hot and mostly the food is digestible.

Do I like good food? Yes. Do I like to cook? Sometimes. I don’t know if anyone has the answer. Maybe it’s one riddle that even bad math and weak logic can't solve.

Lazy Thursday Blues: Caption 16

I thought last Thursday's Why Game went over very well. I hope all enjoyed it, because we'll probably be playing it again. Thanks to Patricia for the idea.

For today I thought we would have some more caption fun. So it is once again Caption Thursday! I'll provide a picture and you provide the caption. This weeks picture has been in my folder for a few months, and I think you'll like it!

As always we need to adhere to good taste. Please keep it clean.


Here's one to get you started!:
This is a no training wheels zone!


Stuff I found this week:

Signbot Make your own cyber scrolling LED sign!

Speak-N-Spell As any 80's child knows, this is one vital part for 'phoning home.'

Road Sofa? Yes, a street legal sofa. 6 wheels, 87mph, 2 headlights, 1 house plant.

Letter To A Sales Clerk

Dear Sales Clerk at Computer Store;

I know you must be surprised to be receiving this letter. I would guess you probably don’t get much mail at work. I want to start by saying I’m sorry for you. I’m sorry you’re in a job you cannot perform. Additionally that you have started to kid yourself, and your customers, into believing in skill that you neither possess, nor will ever acquire. I don’t mean any of this as a cut on you personally. I’m sure that there would be lots of places that your skills would be useful. Nothing comes to my mind right off the bat, but I’m sure we could find someplace for you outside the state mental system. Maybe you would be well suited for a career in management.

You might not remember me specifically as I’m sure the way we interacted yesterday is what you would consider, ‘quality customer service.’ People who are not in your position might call it something else, like annoying, stupid, or just plain imbecilic. Regardless I wanted to send you this letter to better help you in the future, or at least, purge the encounter from my system by writing it down.

When I came in the store, I was looking at computer parts and equipment. Additionally I spent some time browsing through video cards. I was doing this because, I enjoy to be near technology. It makes me happy to see all the equipment lined up on the shelf in pretty boxes and know what they are all for. I then picked up a video card box and started looking at the specifications. This was the point that we began our interaction. I’m sure that there are lots of elderly grandmothers buying video cards for their decrepit computers that could benefit from your expertise. I assured you I was fine and thanked you for your help.

This did not dissuade you from lying to me. You smiled, grabbed an expensive shiny box at random and began your dissertation. Your dissing array of manufactured knowledge was astounding. Even though I’ve been immersed in computing for over a decade, I’d never heard of the protocols and acronyms you rattled off. My favorite being APG ROM which sounds like a fantastic new invention from the future. Even the box itself was crying out with corrections on your ‘truths.’ When I called you on it, you merely shook your head as if to say, ‘Oh you poor soul. It’s a good thing I stopped by.” We chatted back and forth for a number of minutes before I could no longer stand it.

I thanked you again and left the store. I left not because I felt ashamed of being shown up by a lier, but because my brain was shrinking after our conversation. I wanted to get out of the store before I could no longer feed myself. Please don’t take this letter as a criticisms but as a warning from someone who longs for your own best interest. Please, get help. Soon. If nothing else, learn to say, ‘I don’t know.’ That would at least be a start.

Signed;
Peter Brown
Stupid Customer #183652

Technical Trade Offs

I’m not here just to entertain but also to pump your brain full of worthless information that you might someday mistake for truth or wisdom. Keeping in that vein, I will answer a question from the rather light Kludgespot mailbag. Today’s question comes from, no other that my sole sibling, or Boston Love:

“How come the computer techies in an office can get you up and running but almost always leave something physical undone. i.e. My computer if half open and there are a million cords all undone under my cubicle. What gives?? Why don't they finish what they started?! - Boston Love"

The answer is actually rather simple, but I will need to give you a little geek understanding before I can really get to your answer.

First off is this simple philosophy, “In order for good things to happen to you, there must be a trade off.” Geeks are very well aware that, "You cannot have it all.”

The thinking is plain enough. If you want a ham and sour kraut sandwich you need to lose something. This could be something obvious like money, or the time required to eat it. It can also be more severe, like close friends, random acquaintances or your elite social standings. Nothing is free. Everything has it’s price. Even a good thing like losing weight means you will have to buy new clothes, which can be a costly undertaking. There is also the real chance you might have to give up eating anymore ham and sour kraut sandwiches. You need to be aware of the costs before you dive headlong into any endeavor.

Computing is no different. There is a favorite computer saying of mine which goes like this: “It is always something. Good, Fast, Cheap: Pick any two (you can't have all three).” This is the way the world works. If your computer starts smoking and you think something might be wrong, pause for a moment. You need to stop and ask yourself, How bad do you want it fixed? Should I call the office geek? Is it really worth having a poorly dressed, anti-social person under my desk for the next three days? Because that’s what it could take. Do you want that sort of stigma. Plan ahead, think about visitors, clients, and your own sanity. Geeks aren’t pretty, and you want to be sure you’re ready for the ordeal.

You might say “I have a tech who has no personalities flaws.” I say drop the bum! Anyone who is that polished is not a real geek, and simply a wolf in sheep's clothing. Or a normal well adjusted person with a pocket protector. Just as in anything, you have to make trade-offs. If you want to better understand computers, you have to spend time with them. Time that other people spend learning how to look people in the eye, smile, and string multiple thoughts together into coherent sentence structures. So the geeks give up social graces for computers. When a user calls we then have a dilemma. You see, we like computers and we want them to run well, but we don't want to deal with users more than we have to. As geeks we don’t want people calling all the time with petty problems, but we don’t want people to not need our help. This is the trade off we deal with everyday. Social interaction for knowledge of computing. Because of this, we cannot let others get out of their trade offs. You must pay the piper.

So the answer to your question comes down to this, sometimes fixing a computer is fairly simple and you will not need a geek at your desk for the next three days. Which means you could possibly get something for nothing. To a geek, this is not acceptable. To help keep the universe consistent, and make us feel better, we do our best to lend a hand and make you as miserable as we are. To accomplish this we will try to make a small job look as difficult as possible. This helps to adjust for it's lack of universal cost. If that is not possible then we need to leave things a rye, or create new issues. We do this, to share with the users the pain that they might otherwise get out of. This isn't incompetence, this is just for your own good. Trust me.

Good, Fast, Cheap: Pick any two (you can't have all three). I hope that fully answers your question Boston Love.

Want to have your question answered?
Email Me:kludge@anastrophe.com

The Party

“Alright everybody, five minutes to game time! We got it all! Forty-two inch high definition plasma screen!"

"WOO!!"

"Hot wings, chips, dip, drinks, and sausages!"

"WOO!!"

"And this year, no Melvin! The only thing were missing are four hot deep dish pizzas that should be here any minute!”

[bing bong]

“And there they are. I’ll be right back.”

~~~

“Hey you’re late! Do I get an discount or something?”

“I’m sorry I had a little trouble figuring out where the party was...”

“Melvin!”

“Happy to see me?”

“How did you...?”

“At a loss for words I see?"

"Melvin...You weren't suppose.."

"Don’t worry I always know what to say! I have also been thinking a lot about super bowl extra large. For instance-”

"Super bowl what?"

"Super bowl, extra large! I've been working on my game lingo!"

“Forty. Last year was super bowl forty. This year is forty-one. XL and XLI are Roman numerals. It’s a football tradition to use them instead of regular numbers.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know! Who cares? Maybe they thought it added a bit more dignity to it or something. I really don’t have a clue.”

“Anyway so last year we had that long conversation about half-backs...”

"I recall."

"Really?"

“Yes, in fact I have thought about it quite a bit in the last year. That conversation lasted right through the 43-yard fourth-quarter touchdown pass that essentially secured the game.”

“Wow, I didn’t know our conversation meant that much to you. I’m glad to hear you still remember it.”

“Believe me Melvin, I’ll never forget it.”

“Anyway about half-backs...”

“Melvin, Wait."

"Yes?"

"How did you know where the party was? No one called you, right?”

“A-ha! See! I knew it!”

“Knew what?”

“You said ‘no one called’ and it just confirmed what I had already assumed.”

“[sigh] Which was what?”

“That it was a secret party. And that you wanted the guests to try and figure it out where it was on their own."

"Why would I do that?"

"That way you didn’t get any losers at your party. Like that bunch of mush-heads you had last year. Eat, yell, boo. How long can a person endure such company?”

“I was thinking the same thing actually...”

“So I went to your house and you weren’t there.”

“Right.”

“But your neighbor said something about how hard it was to get your TV in your car..."

"I need to have a chat with Ted..."

"...he then said you made three trips back home, and that each trip took approximately twenty five minutes."

"...a nice long chat..."

"...I then used my computer based mapping program to pinpoint each of your known friends houses and then I calculated which you could be making deliveries to in that time frame."

"Maybe we can go hunting together."

"First I tried Kevin's, and his wife must have been in on your game, because she tried to put me off the trail.

"Good ol' Laura."

"But I kept at it! I then tried Ralph's house and someone let the dogs loose on me. luckily I'm quite nimble and was able to escape with only my corduroy cuff as a casualty."

"...better luck next time Butler..."

"I then figured you must be at Doug's place, and well, here we are!"

“Indeed."

"I was quite a test of fortitude and cunning. I must give you credit for dreaming that up!"

"Yeah...Thanks. Well, I guess since you went through all that trouble, you should come inside and watch the game."

"Thank you!"

"Too bad the pizza guy hasn’t gotten here yet.”

“Oh. I sent him away!”

“What! Why?”

“Four deep dish pizzas! That's just ridiculous to think, that anyone else would be able to find this party besides me! Especially with the sort of friends you keep!”

Lazy Thursday Blues: Why Game

Welcome to another edition of the Lazy Thursdays Blues. The Caption game has been going rather well. I have been stocking up on caption pictures and always enjoy seeing everyones creativity!

Today I thought I'd try something else. It should be pretty simple and possibly fun. I call it the Why Game. This isn't like that annoying game you play with a six year-old. Instead I will pose a question and you will give me an answer. The answer can be ridiculous, funny, serious or. whatever. If you know the real answer, post it, if not just have fun. The only real rules are these two:

1. As always, keep it clean.

2. No looking up the real answer.

So let's give it a try! Remember this is less an exercise of WHAT you know but more in your wit or creativity!

"Why do men have decorative buttons on their dress coat sleeves?"


Here's one to get you started

Thought up by women, they serve as a painful reminder to men who ignore tact and wipe their mouths in nice resturants, with their sleeves, instead of their napkins.